Our Charity

Action Medical Research is dedicated to building a better, healthier future for everyone.
We played a crucial role in developing the polio vaccine in the UK, ultrasound scanning in pregnancy, hip replacement surgery and more. We are an independent, national charity and rely totally on voluntary support.

Touching Tiny Lives is Action Medical Research's campaign highlighting the urgent need for more research to help sick and vulnerable babies. We want to raise an additional £3 million over the next 3 years to help find answers to premature birth, pre-eclampsia and other serious conditions which threaten babies and expectant mothers.

Thanks in large part to advances in medical research, the majority of babies can look forward to a healthy future. For most families it is a time of immense joy and relief when their child is born safely. But not all births go as expected.

Around 70,000 babies each year - that's over 10 per cent - require some sort of special care when they are born. Tragically, over 3,000 babies die within the first year, and premature birth is the single biggest cause.

Aims

Not enough funding is devoted to researching the many conditions which affect babies, such as premature birth. Yet the thousands and thousands of babies born prematurely each year are at risk of suffering serious health problems for the rest of their lives.

Action Medical Research believes more must be done to ensure that all babies grow up healthy, and that is why we have launched the Touching Tiny Lives campaign.  

The campaign has the following aims:

• We want to stop pregnancy complications like pre-eclampsia, which can often lead to problems for both mothers and babies.
• We want babies who are born with problems to have the best chance of a healthy start in life. They need special help in their crucial first days and weeks.
• Ultimately, we want to find the causes of premature birth and other problems. Doctors still don't fully understand what causes some babies to be born early, and there are no effective treatments to prevent premature labour.

Action Medical Research would like to thank everybody who has supported Kidz Stuff and , as a result, has contributed to the Touching Tiny Lives Campaign